Doing his tour of the TV studios, John McDonnell sounded like Eeyore discovering that Tigger has trampled the thistles he was saving for his birthday.

Yes, he sighed, many Labour MPs had been engrossed in their mobile phones while he was speaking in the Commons – “It doesn’t look good, but that’s what happens now.”

Still, there was one tiny speck of hope. He’d been looking back at opinion polls from the mid 1990s. “Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were behind the Tories on economic competence,” he told Sky News. “And they won an election.”

I wouldn’t want to suggest that the hard Left are getting desperate. But Tony Blair used to be their byword for failure. Now, apparently, he’s a source of inspiration....